Below is our interview with Christine Jones, an astronomer turned research scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). She is the Consortium director for
the Smithsonian Grand Challenge of Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe. If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below.

For access to all our Career Profile Project interviews, please visit http://aas.org/jobs/career-profiles. We plan to post a new career profile to this blog every first and third Thursday of the month.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Recently I was asked to speak about gender equity at the Institute for Theory and Computation at Harvard. I chose to elaborate a theme that has been on my mind lately. In three brief parts:

I. Why men should advocate gender equity

Women are half the potential talent pool for any organization. Broadening the talent pool increases the talent. Conversely, excluding or discouraging women can only weaken an organization whose mission is not exclusionary. This applies to individual faculty research groups, academic departments, universities and the entire scientific enterprise.

The same practices that improve gender equity improve success and satisfaction for everyone. A good climate for women is a good climate. Your competitors will be happy to absorb the talent you can't retain.

An example: By working hard to improve the climate and to more effectively recruit women who previously were preferentially declining our offers in favor of the competition, MIT successfully increased the percentage of women graduate students in physics from 13.7% in 2007 to 19.8% in 2013. We now exceed the national average and our students are better than ever. This is a good beginning, but significant progress towards full representation requires encouragement and support of women in physics more widely, including at the undergraduate level.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Today’s guest blogger is Elizabeth Rivers. Elizabeth is a postdoc
on the NuSTAR team at Caltech, studying X-ray spectral properties of Active
Galactic Nuclei. Here, she responds to two questions that have come up
repeatedly in the wake of the New York Times article, Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?

1) How are we supposed to
“demand equality” when we are only graduate students (or undergraduates, or
postdocs); we have no power; what can we possibly do?

2) Why should we keep at it when
we know from all these data that we are going to have to work twice as hard for
half as much recognition, less money, and fewer job opportunities?

In response to the first
question I have compiled a list of advice I have heard from other female
physicists and observed in my own life. It is by no means comprehensive,
but I hope to give you some strategies you can try. Don’t forget that
“demanding equality” doesn’t have to be aggressive, but sometimes you do need
to make yourself heard and, more importantly, understood.

Problem: Women are perceived as
less competent than men.

Solution: Give great talks. So
many scientists underestimate the importance of practicing public speaking.
You need to practice, do it in front of people, and then get feedback.
Repeatedly. If you still do not feel confident in your ability to
present your work, try a public speaking workshop or an improv acting class.
You will quickly learn that what all these things really give you is
confidence.When I was gearing up to
defend my thesis my advisor told me, “You are the expert on this topic.No one else in the room knows as much about
it as you do.”Which is a good thing to
remember, especially when you are being bombarded with questions.Don’t apologize, don’t let yourself be
bullied, and if someone is being truly obnoxious just move on.And don’t forget, most people form their
overall impression of you in the first few seconds, so start confident, dress
well, and if possible, make sure the person introducing you has material to
talk you up with.

Monday, October 28, 2013

This week's guest blogger is Nick Murphy. Nick Murphy is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His research is on solar physics, including the role of magnetic reconnection in solar eruptions. He is active in several community groups in the Boston area that are working for gender equity and racial justice.

In January 2013, I attended Arisia, a sci-fi convention in Boston. For most attendees, Arisia is a fun excursion where fans can dress up as their favorite sci-fi character, play board games for hours on end, and speculate about whether or not the Borg developed a taste for Earl Grey tea after attempting to assimilate Captain Picard. Less appreciated is that for authors, editors, and vendors, it is also a workplace and a professional environment. Amazing work is being done within the sci-fi community to prevent sexual harassment, and these strategies provide insight into what we in the astronomical community can do.

Anti-harassment work began months before the convention when representatives from the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center held a workshop on how to respond when people report being sexually harassed or assaulted. The first response is critical in setting the course for a survivor’s recovery. By making this workshop open to everyone, the organizers helped ensure that the community as a whole is holding itself responsible for ending sexual harassment.

Below is our interview with an astronomer/astrophysicist turned non-tenure track lecturer at a large research 1 institution. If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below.

For access to all our Career Profile Project interviews, please visit http://aas.org/jobs/career-profiles. We plan to post a new career profile to this blog every first and third Thursday of the month.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

I am currently visiting the Leiden Observatory, and last night I shared a beer with some of the students and postdocs. The topic quickly moved to Women in Astronomy.

That morning I had been reflecting on the really rotten education in Women-in-Physics culture I had received in my youth. Book? "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman". Movie? "Real Genius". Good grief!

Had I really enjoyed and even recommended those?

But my faith was restored by the thoughtful discussion at the pub. I left feeling that it was all going to be okay, that the future was of our making, and that with students and postdocs like these we were going to change the landscape for women and men in astronomy. Of course, a pint of beer always can inspire overconfidence. But the gathering itself got me thinking as I walked home past canals and careening bicyclists.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Unconscious bias goes hand-in-hand with the concept of
unearned advantage. The two kids on the seesaw start out at the same level and
can play together. As time goes by, however, one accumulates advantage and the
other disadvantage. Any
one slight may seem minor, but small imbalances and discrepancies accrue. Not
only will they no longer be able to play together in future, but these
disparities can have major consequences in salary, promotion, prestige, and
advancement to leadership positions (Merton 1948; 1968).

There is no such thing as an unimportant small difference because they all add to the total. Success
comes from creating and consolidating these small gains, and successful people
seem to know how to take advantage of this. “Mountains are molehills piled one on top of the
other” (Valian 1998).

Monday, October 21, 2013

By Meg Urry, Yale University (Department of Physics and Department of Astronomy)

The following is adapted from a keynote address given at the APS Conference on Graduate Education in January, 2013.

Reproduced from the June 2013 Issue of Status: A Report on Women in Astronomy

I am pleased to be addressing (and attending) this conference and I also know this audience is deeply committed to graduate education, so you probably don’t need to hear what I am going to say. Nonetheless, I thought a keynote address should be provocative, so I’ve done my best to push some buttons...

The invitation to speak tonight came shortly after the election last November. Front and center in the news was the Republican party’s concern about the shifting demographics in the United States: talking heads and columnists described the vanishing white male, the increasing diversity of the American population, and the sense that modern political parties have to adjust accordingly.

Friday, October 18, 2013

The AAS Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy is conducting a survey regarding two body careers. Please help us in our pursuit to better understand how two body careers impact the astronomical community.

Below is our interview with Andre Wong, an astronomer turned electrical engineer at Teledyne. If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below.

For access to all our Career Profile Project interviews, please visit http://aas.org/jobs/career-profiles. We plan to post a new career profile to this blog every first and third Thursday of the month.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

A top-25 astronomy department has a major gender imbalance on their faculty. Let's say the fraction of women professors is below 10% of the overall faculty (This is a safe example since we don't actually know of such a department, do we? Right? Anyone?).

Let's suppose that the upper administrators at said hypothetical university (e.g. the Dean of Sciences) would like to address this problem with a radical approach. If the astronomy department conducts a programmatic search for a woman junior professor and identifies a candidate that meets the high bar expected of the university and department, then a special faculty line will be made available that won't count against future departmental hires.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Unprofessional behavior is not limited to
gender discrimination and sexual harassment. There are cases when “something is
just not right” in the workplace, which may involve no sexual overtones
whatsoever. One such example is Workplace Bullying, which can have some
characteristics in common with childhood bullying. It is not limited to women. It
can involve teasing or taunting. It can be overt or covert. It can be physically
or psychologically threatening. It can come from a supervisor or a collaborator.
It can involve spreading rumors about your qualifications or abilities as a
scientist. The stress associated with a bullying situation can affect your work
and your health. You may even feel that your future career is in jeopardy.

Here is a bullying variation on an
astronomical theme that I have heard more than once. Someone (probably more
senior than you, but probably not your advisor) inflicts him/herself into your
science. He/she could be stealing your ideas, giving the impression to others
that you could not succeed without mentorship from him/her, or undermining you
with your advisor or collaborators.

Concerted effort to increase the number of women in Spain’s Academy of Science. Just this past year, the number has risen from a few percent to ~15 percent!

Four month paid family leave for both parents (this is not new to Spain, but I still wanted to include it in their list of positive policies)^1.

Providing a ‘stop the clock’ equivalent for grants/fellowships/etc. restricted to applicants within a certain number of years post a given career stage. ‘Stop the clock’, in this case, refers to providing an additional year for each child past the usual date you can apply for these awards.

Recommending and encouraging that parents place the year of when they have a child on to their CVs, so that it becomes a normal part of the process to take into account the impact of having a child on productivity.

Below is our interview with Edmund Bertschinger, an astronomer turned tenure track faculty and chair of the Physics Department at MIT. If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Advice from Both Sides of the Interview Table

A year ago, I made the transition from astrophysicist to data scientist. One of the harder parts of making the transition was convincing a tech company (during the interview process) that I could do the job. Having now been on both sides of the interview table, I’d like to share some advice to those wishing to break into the tech/data science industry. While this advice is applicable to candidates in general, I’m going to be gearing it towards applicants coming from academia / PhD programs.

Most tech companies are interested in smart, talented people who can learn quickly and have good problem solving skills. We see academics as having these skills. Therefore, if you apply for internships or jobs at tech companies, you will most likely get a response from a recruiter. The problem is that once you get an interview, there are a lot of industry-specific skills that the company will try to assess, skills that you may or may not have already.

Below are some of the traits we look for when recruiting for the Yammer analytics/data team, descriptions of how we try to determine if a candidate has these traits, and what you should do to ‘nail’ this aspect of the interview.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

The 2010 report entitled, Why So Few? Women in Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, by the American
Association of University Women (AAUW), reviews GPAs and high-stakes testing. The graph above shows students’ average GPA
in high school math and science combined over time, by gender. High school
girls now also earn higher GPAs in math and science, on average, than their
male peers do. It is also important to note that average GPAs in math and
science for all students are improving over time.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Recently, I was talking with a colleague recently about a class he was teaching.
He said, "and the book was written by [prominent physicist].
She's a woman physicist, you know," (emphasis mine) and
he gave me a Look. It was the kind of Look that said, "hey, see?
I just praised a women scientist, proving I'm not biased.
Give me a cookie!"

I'm never quite sure how to respond to this kind of thing.
Because, on the one hand, it's great that they recognize women's
accomplishments. But on the other hand, if I give them a cookie
this time, they'll continue to expect cookies every other time they
make some small gesture. Not to mention it makes me feel singled out.
Why do I need to be the one to give approval?

What's wrong with cookies? Well, it can be tiring handing them out,
especially since people seem to turn only to me for them, me being
the only woman on the faculty in my department. Also, they should be
working toward equality of opportunity because it's intrinsically a good thing,
not because they get
cookies for it. It makes me wonder what happens when I'm not around,
if they do the right thing even when I'm not there to award them
cookies.

So when I get asked for cookies, I tend to give out very small ones.
Just a small nod of acknowledgement and I move on with the conversation.
What do you do when you get asked for cookies?

Below is our interview with an astronomer turned tenure track faculty and project scientist at an observatory. If you have questions, suggestions, advice to share, etc. about this career path, please leave a comment below.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Analysis by the American Institute of Physics Statistical Research Center this summer by Susan White & Rachel Ivie questions whether the low percentage of women faculty in physics departments, and their absence from many departments, is evidence of a lack of equity for women. The authors point out that the main factor is the small percentage of women in physics overall. Given the small fraction of women overall, the argument goes, departments may be equitable in appointing women despite their small representation on the faculty.

In a later report on Women among Physics & Astronomy Faculty, the authors point out that in Physics, women are hired as assistant professors at rates well above their availability rate among doctoral recipients. In 2007, 18% of PhDs in physics were awarded to women. In 2010, 29% of newly hired assistant professors of physics were women (based on a survey with 93% response rate from departments). One possible conclusion is that physics departments are working hard to improve gender equity, and we should be pleased with the results. I've even heard some argue that departments are going out of their way to recruit women.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Today’s suggestion: Get a friend/colleague/supervisor to subscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter.

The CSWA publishes a weekly email newsletter called AASWOMEN which has over 1000 active subscribers. The editors are Michele Montgomery, Daryl Haggard, Nick Murphy, & Nicolle Zellner. A typical issue contains requests for information or advice, links to news items about women in science, announcements of honors and awards given to women in science, information about programs and meetings, and links to internship and job postings. Some of the topics covered over the past year include: advice on responding to bullying, sexual harassment, and unprofessional behavior; information and statistics on why women aren't promoted to full professor as often as men are; parental leave for graduate students; unconscious bias; and a series of ongoing contributions about 'how things have changed - for the better!' which highlighted practices we are thankful to see have vanished (women are no longer automatically expected to serve the tea and cookies at colloquia, for example).